Midnight Eye: Gokuu

This two-part OVA series from 1989 is adapted from the manga by Buichi Terasawa, whose work, I must confess, I'm not terribly familiar with. But I have seen the Space Adventure Cobra movie, and between that and what I've heard, I gather his stories typically feature two elements: manly men and shapely women. The first episode of Goku: Midnight Eye, you'll be pleased to hear (or not), has both.

Let's get this out of the way: Goku is a standard action movie, albeit one that has all the style and flair you'd expect from director Yoshiaki Kawajiri. If you go into it expecting ... any more, you'll be disappointed. There are no thought provoking themes or deep characterization here. But despite that, Goku manages to tell an entertaining story. Which I will now spoil, for this is the only way to convey its greatness.

An investigation is being conducted into the activities of a businessman the police suspect of being an arms dealer. But one by one the officers involved in the surveillance operation are taking their own lives. Enter Goku Furinji, a wisecracking private detective with terrible dress sense. A tie draped over his bare chest, he positively exudes manliness. As an ex-cop who was friends with the dead men, Goku takes a personal interest in the case, despite warnings from his old boss to keep out of it.

Goku is, of course, far too manly too manly to be deterred, and decides to take matters into his own hands. After a brief encounter with a naked female android who shoots a laser from her mouth and has motorcycle handlebars mounted on her back, he faces a naked woman with a plume of hypnotic feathers and ends up with no choice but to stab his own left eye in order to save his life. Then he drives into a river. What a man.

If you're not yet having trouble suspending your disbelief, keep reading.

Duing a dream sequence, a booming voice informs a Goku that he has been given a cybernetic eye to replace the one he lost. He wakes up, inexplicably, on a park bench and soon realizes that it wasn't a dream. The eye is, quite frankly, shit-hot. Not only can it access any computer in the world, it can CONTROL them. Suddenly, Goku is practically invincible.

Why was he given this eye? Who gave it to him? Where did the technology come from? Pfft. If you're the kind of viewer who gives a crap about these kind of details, you probably wouldn't be watching this show in the first place. Suffice it to say, he wants revenge, and goes about it in the most manly way possible: by jumping from a helicopter and using his infinitely extendable staff to pole-vault through a window several thousand (possibly) floors high.

I'm a huge fan of Kawajiri and his unique style is evident throughout Goku: Midnight Eye. Like his earlier Wicked City, the show takes full advantage of his ability to create a dark, oppressive, gothic urban environment, and it's populated with a cast of elegantly designed characters. The animation is similarly impressive, with fluid action scenes and minimal reliance on shortcuts. The cheesy 80s synth music, however, does little but ratchet up the camp factor, which may or may not be a good thing. I can't quite decide.

So what do we have? A stoic, indestructible hero. Unspeakably evil bad guys. Plenty of random nudity. Gorgeous design. Yep, it's an 80s OVA, it's great fun, and it's the kind of show that doesn't get made any more. And I think that's a real shame.

This is a true gem in the heydays of cyberpunk anime ova´s, so goes for part 2, anyway i really am SOO distressed that there is no plans to revive or continue this one, with REAL potential that is left unfinished. The storyline starts a bit predictable but evolves into further dark background and some very mysterious charac., villians with some that are introduced fast while others have a more bigger role. the main person in here is definetly no wimp, and it proves it by the fightingstyle, so is the more marure animation with some good late 80´s sketches, i really was totally ... into the story at loads of scene´s , with ofc enjoyable music.

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS MILD SPOILERS.

SUMMARY: If you love cheesy, goofy late 80s anime shlock with a genuinely well done cyberpunk/noir setting, this is the OVA for you. If you expect an actually good or deep story that doesn't go totally off the rails, look elsewhere.


Goku Midnight Eye is a 1989 OVA based on the manga of the same name. There are two OVA episodes made, this being the first one, and in my humble opinion far and away the better of the two.

Fair word of warning: I'm a big, big fan of B-movie type stuff, cheesy shlock and all sorts of things that are ... unintentionally hilarious. With Goku Midnight Eye, I personally feel like I've landed a real hit for my growing list of material for B-movie nights. As a result, if you expect a review that takes this OVA 100 percent seriously, then I'm afraid I can't help you.

On the surface, Goku Midnight Eye has all the makings of a really solid action romp. The animation, courtesy of Madhouse, looks fluid and outright impressive at times. The 80s Cyberpunk setting is very well done, and it's no wonder clips/gifs from Goku Midnight Eye show up in a lot of 80s aesthetic collections. Some scenes and moments really do look great, and have a great sense of color and mood. Some of the music also works quite well to round this out.

However, and I cannot beat around the bush any longer ... Goku Midnight Eye is also complete and utter cheesy nonsense that I found impossible not to laugh at. I'm a huge fan of serious Cyberpunk stuff and man, this OVA is not it. It is however genuinely great fun, especially with friends, if you are open to a lovably goofy time. (Bonus points if you pick the dub for this)

The story is about a smarmy, dirtbag noir cop utterly coated in cliches who thinks of himself as the coolest dude in the universe. He tries so hard to seem like a total badass, and I thought it was hilarious. The dub only cranks this feeling up to 11, because in typical 80s OVA fashion it adds a ton of swearing and goofy language.

Our "hero" investigates a dangerous case, comes across a sexy gal and an evil villain, things get violent, then midway-through the story acquires the titular "Midnight Eye" implant as a, spoiler, *literal gift from God*. This is never explained. Gods and other such powers were never even mentioned up to this point. It just happens, and is never discussed again. It allows our protagonist to literally hack anything in the world. It's as goofy and incredible as it sounds, and just one of many moments of fun action paired with hilarious cheese in this OVA.

I'll not spoil anything more, especially not the villain's master plan which is easily one of the funniest and most incredible villain plans I've ever seen. At some point, there is a fight against a naked woman that is half motorcycle. If that doesn't make you want to watch this, nothing will, really.


BOTTOM LINE: I overall give Goku Midnight Eye a 5, since on more objective levels I just don't think it's a particularly well executed OVA. The story explains very little, the characters are cliches, particularly the English dub has a ton of smarmy one liners. There is nothing of real substance there. However, it's also such good silly fun that it gets laughs out of me every time. A great watch for similiarly minded friends.


CONTENT WARNINGS: Strong violence against women, bunch of exposed boobs, moments of gore, assorted 80s sexism. It all comes across as more harmless and dumb than anything else, since the subject matters aren't treated with any sort of depth, but it still felt worth mentioning.

Midnight Eye, despite its unassuming appearance (for a Yoshiaki Kawajiri feature at least), is a true cyberpunk anime through and through. Still, it perplexes me how subtle and restrained this cyberpunk world feels despite featuring laser firing quadruped android redheads complete with kinky motorbike handles attached and the nature of the titular midnight eye. It seems that once you take away the relentless in your face dose of the far out occult or gorgeous mechanical art that Yoshiaki Kawajiri is so well known for, his equally distinctive atmospheric metropolises bite very close to home; to our own bustling yet uncaring and distant cities.

I would dig ... deeper into this subtlety but it does not seem intentional as the plot is about as standard and ass kicking as Cyber City Oedo or Wicked City are.
My only complaints are its lack of resolution, especially when the two aforementioned ovas are such tight, well crafted packages. Neither the Midnight Eye's benefactors nor the fate of the heroine is made clear, as if these threads were inconsequential, which is frustrating. Even the heroic deaths that female characters often get in Yoshiaki Kawajiri's other works would have given so much closure.

The lesser emphasis on standout bizzare/aweing sci fi or supernatural imagery means Midnight Eye does not quite attain the legendary status of other Yoshiaki Kawajiri works but because of this, presents us with the purest form of his badass wisecracking hero prevails over insanely bizzare death encounters formula; and its absolutely top notch entertainment. A must watch classic ova that reaffirms everything great about the awesome style of anime fans dub MANime!

Well, after this I could say that Yoshiaki Kawajiri is confirmed as possibly my favorite director of Japanese animated movies in terms of style. What I have watched of him are not necessarily masterpieces like those of others, but I love his style. Unimportant scripts and situations, but an aesthetic that is a fucking blast with a visual mastery, way of "shooting" and editing that are solid gold.

His films have charm and sparkle, 80s tacky elegance, always developing during nights, in hotels, pubs, discos and strip clubs. With sports cars, top cars, guns, sexy women, sex, sentimental music, neon lights, office lights, highway lights, lights ... everywhere, that's the charm of the night, its city lights.

Originally, when I first seen the cover photo of this anime I honestly thought it was a series, but only when I started to watch that I realized it was a movie, it's a shame, because after finishing this anime movie, I thought to myself this would have made an epically one of a kind awesome series, I thought the idea of a single microscopic eye being able to control computers on a global level even to the highest level of deploying nuclear weapons was absolutely ingenious. The doctor or random mad scientist who decided to inplant that into goku had reasons of his own, ... which were never divulged or explained during the movie, but what power that would be to be able to control machines on a global scale like that, that's just top notch technological power right there, and I just want to close this review up with saying that, they don't make violent anime like this anymore, with the art style which I love, you cannot beat anime from the 1980s and 1990s. I don't care how much you try to copy the original, it just cannot be done or compared. And I noticed goku's voice was the same voice actor who played mokotonshishio in rurouni kenshin.

If you extract feelings of nostalgia and comfort from old 80's anime due to their vaporwave / outrun aesthetic, Midnight Eye: Gokuu is going to be a welcome treat to your senses. The animation is beautiful, and there are enough boobs and fast cars to go around as well. The story isn't mind-blowing, but it's not awful. A solid way to spend an evening.

Gokuu is your typical manly man detective. He's out to serve justice and protect naked women from unfathomable evils.
The women are the typical helpless types from the era, and they throw themselves at Gokuu when they are aware of the prospects of ... him fixing all of their problems.

But man, that visual style. Wow. Sure, at the time it was nothing special, but today it hits hard.

This is one of the cheesiest '80s OVAs out there, although it's difficult to recommend to others due to the nudity.

The story starts out straightforward enough: Goku, an ex-cop-turned-detective, is on the case after his former partner and other coworkers mysteriously commit suicide. He finds out that these deaths are all connected to one person: a wealthy businessman named Hakuryu, but there's no evidence.

This is where things get weird. As Goku digs deeper, he sneaks into the bad guy's base, which is complete with a giant, a half-naked dog-like motorcycle-hybrid woman who shoots pink lasers from her mouth, and robot mosquitoes equipped with anesthesia. ... Meanwhile, elsewhere, there is also a naked woman with peacock feathers that have eyes on them which hypnotize people, and a guy who has a bunch of the robot mosquitoes stored in his head. Goku is almost hypnotized by the peacock woman, but he gouges out his eye, and then he is saved by some mysterious benefactor for mysterious reasons. The benefactor replaces Goku's eye with a mechanical eye that can control every computer, satellite, and otherwise any mechanical device, and also gives him what is basically some sort of magic stick that can do stuff when paired with the eye. Goku then summarily goes all out and kicks butt in a series of extreme, yet highly entertaining, action sequences.

Besides the plot being an absolute cheese-fest, the one-liners Goku gives are gold. He seems to always know the right thing to say at the right time, with deadpan delivery. The voice actor for Goku only had a few other roles, so I guess he wasn't very experienced. At times it sounded like he was just reading straight from the script, which actually made his lines funnier.

Technical aspect-wise, this OVA is decent. It has nice animation and character designs, and nice voice acting (except for Goku), especially for the villains, who were played by popular voice actors. The music is good, particularly the ending theme. Some of the sound effects seemed a little off, however.

The story, despite its outlandish cheesiness, manages to have a beginning, middle and end, which is more than can be said for a lot of these '80s OVAs. There is virtually zero character development; however, in this kind of show, character development isn't really necessary (and good character development doesn't usually happen within a 50-minute timeframe, anyway). The two female characters in this OVA are both topless for long periods of time, so this is difficult to recommend to the average viewer, but it's definitely watchable and enjoyable.

Recommended for people who like a good dose of cheesy action, if you don't mind the outrageousness and the nudity.

I mean, it's Kawajiri. What else do I have to say.
Went in with normal expectations though, was hoping it might be as fun as his other OVA projects. To start, I don't know exactly why I chose the dub, just went in blind. The fact that it was the immortal Steve Blum as Goku was an absolute treat. The rest of the dub, let me just say is a bit dated. There was some pretty hilarious moments with Yoko's voice actress which had me laughing.
Overall, though not as completely off the wall as Wicked City, the peacock woman is about as close as ... we can come.
Don't have much to say about the actual show though I do highly recommend viewing. The final line of this first part is just gold.

Midnight Eye: Gokuu is a two-part OVA series directed by the one and only Yoshiaki Kawajiri, who has also directed such classics like Ninja Scroll, Wicked City, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, and Cyber City Oedo 808 to name a few. This anime follows a man named Gokuu Fuurinji a device that investigates the murders of his fellow officer colleagues and has been given the "eye of god" which allows him to hack into any computer which he then can control. Out of the cyberpunk anime Kawajiri has directed, Midnight Eye: Gokuu is probably my favorite. The art, the violence, and the weird shit that goes ... on in this anime is just incredible. Don't get me started on the OST, an amazing blend of synth, industrial, and a bit of hard rock sets such a great mood. If you're a fan of Kawajir's work, 90's anime, and cyberpunk, seeing Midnight Eye: Gokuu is a must.